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Monson: Two things you must know about new BYU basketball coach Mark Pope: He’ll stand up for his players and he won’t punch a ref.

The tall BYU assistant coach stood up to argue a bad call with a referee, and the prickly, sensitive ref reacted as though that assistant had carelessly, and maybe purposely, maliciously, rear-ended his bejeweled SUV, the old classic one with huge, overcompensating deep-dish Crager mags. He jumped out and over, exploding into a lecture at the assistant unlike anything I’ve ever seen in college basketball, or basketball at any level.

The setting, as best as I can recall, was a tight game between BYU and Gonzaga at the Marriott Center a few years back. The Cougars had little to play for that day other than pride.